This invention relates to a roof shingle laying machine which automatically places a shingle in a desired position on a roof of a building, and then staples the shingle to the roof.
When laying shingles on the roof of a building, it is of course very important to align the shingles properly relative to the roof and relative to the other shingles. Most commercially-available asphalt roof shingles are provided with slots on the top and side surfaces which allow the shingles to be placed properly by hand, and then secured. However, such manual placement and securing of the shingles is time consuming, and requires continuous strenuous contortions of the roofer. Therefore, various shingle laying devices have been developed for automatically placing a shingle on a roof and then securing the shingle to the roof.
One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,656,808 to Mansfield. According to this reference, the roof shingles are placed by the operator on a large rotating drum. As the device is pushed along the roof, the drum rotates, causing a shingle to be deposited on the roof surface. The drum is indexed so that the shingle is deposited when the device has been moved the correct distance. Attached to the device are staplers which then staple the shingle to the roof.
However, this device suffers from various drawbacks. One, the shingles must manually be moved by the operator onto the rotating drum. Two, because the shingles are rotated with the drum, it is difficult to keep the shingles properly aligned with the drum while the device is moved. Also, this device is certainly very complicated and cumbersome to operate. Finally, the inherent characteristics of shingles do not allow them to be bent to conform to the curve of the drum--bending will cause cracking and/or delamination of the fibers in shingles.